One Second After

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was a ghost-town feel to the village as John drove into Black Mountain and did his new morning ritual of circling through the downtown area to see if anything had happened during the night.

Makala, sitting beside him, silent; most likely, he thought, going over the plan they had for the phone call.

Windows to once proud shops along Cherry Street were streaked and dirty. His old favorite, Ivy Corner, had burned two weeks ago, the fire an accident caused by some squatters. The fire had been allowed to burn since it threatened no other buildings, and John had let the squatters go without punishment.

Bits of paper, dust, leaves, swirled in the street with the autumn breeze. At the corner of State and Black Mountain a teenager had a booth, made up from an oak desk that had been thrown out of the furniture store when it was converted to a hospital. He had two plump squirrels and a rabbit hanging from a pole. “Squirrel seven bullets, rabbit twenty bullets, willing to barter,” read a hand-lettered sign.

As food grew scarcer, the price was going up. But bullets were scarce now as well.

John’s earlier prediction that cigarettes might very well become currency had been wrong. Nearly every last one had been smoked long ago. He still felt the pangs for it. It was bullets that were now the currency of choice, especially .22 and shotgun shells.

In his own hunting he had set the .22 rifle aside, going over to the .50-caliber Hawkins flintlock. One of the reenactors from John’s old Roundtable group had started up a business of making black powder. The reenactor had figured out how to scavenge and process saltpeter and sulphur and the lead for the bullets; that could be found in any old car battery.

John circled past the military hospital. It was empty. The wounded who still needed treatment had been transferred up to Gaither Hall, which was being heated by the retrofitted boiler. Makala now ran that hospital, tending to the nearly forty who were still struggling to survive.

The casualties had indeed been high, over 700 dead, 120 of those students, and 700 wounded, of whom a third had died, and some were still dying, even now.

Nearly a third of the students had thus died in the battle or afterwards, another third wounded. A horrific price. In class, so long ago, when he spoke of Civil War battles where a regiment would lose two-thirds of their men in a battle, it had always been numbers. Now it was real, so terribly real. Both Jeremiah and Phil had died in the fight, and so many others of his kids, as John had once called them.

Just yesterday he had attended another funeral, of the girl Laura who had lost her leg above the knee. She just could not beat the subsequent infections.

The funeral had been a heartbreaking affair. Only a handful showed up, those with the strength to show, and as she was laid to rest, the surviving members of the choir sang the song that somehow had become associated with the college and the battle: “The Minstrel Boy.”

The dead from the battle were all interred in the veterans cemetery at the edge of town, one slope of the cemetery given over to their graves. There had been talk that someday a monument would be erected to them… someday.

Everyone agreed they needed a special resting place and not just the golf course.

There was still the occasional skirmish that needed the militia. A small band of a couple dozen raiders made the trek over the Swannanoa mountains and hit down along old Route 9, and a week later an expedition was led by John down into Old Fort to root out the few remaining members of the Posse, most of them wounded, who had somehow escaped. Six more dead for the college as a result. As for Old Fort itself, barely a civilian was left alive after the treatment the Posse had given them.

Those of John’s troops who were still left were indeed hardened now.

Regarding Kellor’s prediction about another epidemic, he had been right. Days after the battle, what some were now calling the plague month began.

There were nearly three thousand new graves at the golf course, one of them for Doc Kellor. The medical staff had been particularly hard-hit; there were only two doctors and one vet remaining. It had indeed been like the plague in years of old, most physicians heroically standing to their duty until they were felled, but one had just fled, hiding in his cabin, and was now an outcast, the town pariah.

The simple combination of disease and starvation had created a death rate as terrible as that of the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Added in were hundreds with hepatitis A, others carrying B and C, which would kick in later, the usual injuries, the minor cuts that led to amputation and death.

It was the dying-off time and by yesterday’s count just over forty percent of the two communities, which had been alive little more than four months back, were still alive. As a war, it was the most horrific since the Middle Ages. The legendary twenty-five million dead in the Soviet Union during World War II had been but one-seventh its population.

And yet now briefly they were swimming in food. The carefully guarded cornfields had yielded a bumper crop. Every apple orchard was striped of its fruit, even the wormy ones. Pumpkins had fleshed out to fifteen, twenty pounds or more, and would not just be used this year for carved decorations. The college scavengers were bringing in bushel baskets of nuts, pinecones, sunflowers, and in some places finding remains of orchards up in the woods where a homestead had been a hundred years ago, the long-forgotten trees stripped clean.

But the food had to be carefully counted, for it would need to last until the coming of spring. And what seemed like a bounty was, in fact, barely enough, actually not enough, for all to get through the winter.

As for meat, there was now almost none, still the occasional squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, or possum, but deer, bear, even wild boar had been hunted to near extinction. Yet again, the false memories of the supposed life on the frontier or up in the mountains now, that all one needed to do was get a gun, walk for a few hours, and then drag back a hundred pounds or more of meat. But when thousands were thinking the same thing, in an area even as extensive as five hundred square miles, and hunting season was now 365 days a year, the game was all but gone.

Hunting parties from the college were going up into the high mountains for three and four days at time and, more often than not, coming back empty-handed. The forest had been hunted clean.

So there was food, but there was no balance to the food and the dying continued, even as apples were carefully hung to dry, corn stacked up in dry sheds, all covered by armed guards twenty-four hours a day. The few elderly in the community still alive were pressed into service to teach the now all but forgotten art of canning. The problem was, there were hardly any proper canning jars and gaskets, which sealed them, to be found.

Every day he had been terrified for Makala, who was in the thick of it, but she had survived untouched. She had avoided their house during the dying month, only coming down to check when John was finally hit by it and then Jen, though through luck, or good nursing, the flu symptoms had run their course in a few days. Elizabeth had caught it as well, and John did not feel uncomfortable that, being pregnant, she was entitled to the now very rare antibiotics and additional rations to see her through. Fortunately, it had not touched Jennifer.

But for her, the risk of flu was no longer the concern.

It was Jennifer all were focused on now. The remaining insulin had finally lost all potency two weeks back, more than a month earlier than John had planned for. With the final bottle Makala risked several injections that finally totaled 800 units to bring Jennifer’s blood sugar level back down from 520 to 145. It was now back over 600, climbing, and six days ago she had collapsed. All the symptoms that Kellor had long warned John about were now full-blown. Extreme thirst at first, nearly uncontrollable urinating, a simple scuffed knee that had never really healed over now raging with infection, red streaks up nearly to her groin, her fever soaring to 103. Her immune system had failed, kidneys were failing… her precious little body was shutting down.

He knew he should drive up to the gap to check on the guard there, but that had to wait. The drive around town had fulfilled John’s duty for the moment, though as he turned the corner past the ruins of the Front Porch he could see, up the street, two bodies lying out along the curb, waiting to be picked up, and made a mental note to call Bartlett.

John pulled into his usual slot in front of the town hall and got out, Makala joining him.

Judy was actually the person who was the center of the town as the switchboard operator, having risen from the quiet role of a secretary. She knew every call coming in and out, lived at the office, and at night monitored the battery-powered radio, pulled out of the blue Mustang, listening for news from the outside, which she would then post each morning on the whiteboard outside town hall.

As he walked in he could see the latest, a report that Asheville supposedly had a reliable two-way radio link with Charleston. Four emergency supply trucks had arrived in Greenville, South Carolina, and one was promised to Asheville by the end of the week. She had not posted the news, though, when she had called into him just after dawn, that a helicopter had landed yesterday evening at Memorial Hospital, reportedly carrying a load of medicines.

That knowledge would trigger an attempt by those still capable of moving to get into Asheville, and he knew that Asheville would not let any of them through the barrier near Exit 53 that was now a permanently fortified position, definitely payback for their defiance regarding the refugees back in the spring. The few refugees from outside trying to get farther west were allowed through, but anyone from Swannanoa or Black Mountain seeking to cross the line to barter was blocked.

He walked into the office, Judy looking up from her switchboard.

“Hi, boss.”

“Judy, connect me to Memorial Hospital. Put it through to my line and the line in the conference room.”

“I’ll get on it.”

John went into his office, the office that had been Charlie’s. John had not changed it all that much, the only addition a framed Polaroid picture of the survivors of what was now called the First Battalion, Black Mountain Rangers. Eighty-one soldiers, standing in front of Gaither Hall, the picture taken a week after the battle. They looked twenty years older than the kids in another picture beside it, the annual graduation photo of all the seniors, taken just two days before “The Day.” Some were in both photos. The kids in the graduation photo looked fresh, ready to go out and take on the world with enthusiasm and joy. The rangers, they looked as if they could take on the world, by killing. The picture always made him think of a painting by Tom Lea, a combat artist of the Second World War, of a shell-shocked marine at Peleliu called The Two Thousand Yard Stare. “Boss, I got a line open. Pick up.”

John lifted the rotary phone off the cradle and there was a crackling hum.

“Memorial Hospital.” The voice sounded faint, distant.

“This is Black Mountain calling,” Judy said. “Can you connect a call to the hospital director, Dr. Vance, from Dr. Matherson, director of public safety in Black Mountain?”

Makala had advised Judy to use John’s old title. Doctors of the M.D. kind looked down on doctors of the Ph.D. kind, but still, it would help to get through.

“Please hold,” came the voice from the other end.

John looked across at Makala, who was standing at the crank phone in the conference room.

Five minutes passed, then ten. He sat on his desk, waiting nervously, heart racing, the only sound static and then a distant voice.

“Vance here.”

“Dr. Vance. This is,” he hesitated, “Matherson, director of public safety for Black Mountain.”

“What do you want?”

He could hear the exhaustion in Vance’s voice. John looked over at Makala and nodded. He was afraid if he continued, emotion would take over, and the man on the other end had no time for emotional appeals.

John had sat in the same spot now since Charlie’s death. Decisions about who got rations and who did not. The condemning to death by execution of twenty-two people for looting of food, in one night fifteen of them had killed off two head of cattle, and, horrifyingly, one for cannibalism. Fortunately, he was now able to delegate that terrible deed to someone else, three people, one from Swannanoa, one from Black Mountain, and a professor from the college.

John had listened to so many appeals, and always he had to judge based upon what was fair, and fairness was who might be able to make it through to next spring and who was now triaged off.

“Dr. Vance, this is Makala Turner. I was head RN with the cardiac surgical unit at Overlook in Charlotte. I worked directly with Dr. Billings. I’m now head of all emergency treatment here in Black Mountain.”

That line was carefully prepared by her, to create a sense of equality and draw from the tradition of mutual professional respect.

“Billings, how is he?” And then a pause, a realization most likely of the absurdity of the question.

“Doctor, on the day things went down, I was coming up to Memorial to attend your briefing on the new cauterization method for control of P.A.T. arrhythmia.”

A pause.

“Seems like a million years ago,” and John could hear the voice on the other side soften.

Makala had thought this out well. He looked over to her, but her back was turned to him, avoiding eye contact. “Nurse Makala…”

“Turner,” she said. “Dr. Vance, we have a situation here I think you can address.”

“Go on,” and John could hear the tension come back into Vance’s voice. “We got word that a helicopter load of medical supplies was airlifted to your hospital last night.”

A long pause… “Yes, that is correct.”

“Dr. Vance. We have a girl, twelve years old, type one diabetic.”

“And she’s still alive?” There was an incredulous note in his voice.

“She’s been carefully monitored and is a tough kid. Her father was able to obtain enough insulin to last five months, but the stock has degraded and all potency is gone.”

“Amazing she lasted this long.”

John stiffened, again looking at Makala, the way she was now so clinically talking about Jennifer.

“Dr. Vance. Was any insulin included in that shipment?” There was a pause.

“Was there any insulin?” John asked, cutting back in, his voice tense. “Yes.”

A pause on the other end.

“How long has she been without insulin?” Vance asked.

Makala quickly turned, looked at John, and shook her head.

“Last injection four days ago.”

It was a lie; it had been over two weeks.

Silence on the other end.

“Blood count?”

“Three hundred and ten,” again a lie; it was over twice that now and still climbing.

“Dr. Vance?” Makala asked. “Yes.”

“We can send a vehicle to pick up a vial, just a thousand units. It will save her life.”

He sighed and with that sigh John knew. How many had heard him sigh in the same way before rejecting their tearful appeal for but one more bowl of soup or the release of but two or three pills of Cipro or the few precious Z-pac antibiotics locked away in a safe?

“Save her life for how long?” Vance finally replied. “A month? The insulin received might be all we’ll get for several months. It’s already been designated for those who can survive on far lower doses than type one diabetics need.”

“Dr. Vance, we can have her at the hospital in an hour. Just one injection to stabilize her. We’ve heard the road might be open down to Columbia and from there to Charleston; we’ll risk driving her down there if you can help us stabilize her.”

“You and I both know the road is not open. A dozen people from here tried to get through just to Greenville yesterday and were wiped out by raiders in Saluda Gap,” Vance replied, “and even if you did get through, there’s no chance she’ll be given more. The authorities in Charleston have listed insulin, along with a couple hundred other drugs, as A priority, meaning to be distributed in extreme need only to those under the age of forty-five and over eighteen with high probability of survival and the ability to work in some manner. They sent me exactly five vials.”

Frustrated, John thought of Don Barber’s plane.

“Is there a means to fly her out?” John interjected forcefully. “Surely you must have planes down at Asheville Airport that are still flying.”

“We did, but we don’t now. We lost the last two a week ago. The pilots just took off with their families and disappeared. And even if we did have that means, I’d prioritize a hundred other cases first for airlift, even if we had it.”

Makala waved for John to shut up and there was a long pause. A long pause that drifted into nearly a minute of silence. “I’m sorry, but the answer is no. Now, if you will excuse me…” John stood up.

“We are talking about my daughter!” he shouted. “I suspected that,” Vance replied. “And suspect as well that it’s been far longer than four days since her last injection.”

“Please, Dr. Vance. Please, it’s my daughter. Just one injection.”

“John, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“John. Like I said, they sent up five vials. I’ve got two kids in this hospital now who have standard childhood diabetes and are barely hanging on, but God forgive me I’m withholding the medicine even from them because I’ve got nearly thirty adults with varying degrees of diabetes that can survive a lot longer with just a low dose. I might need this stock for the rest of the year to try and save some that can be saved.”

“Please for God’s sake.”

“John. Please listen. One injection for your daughter will not change the final diagnosis; it will simply postpone the inevitable. My God,” he said wearily, “do you think I want to tell you this? John, I have enough anesthesia for maybe twenty operations and we need hundreds. Painkillers, even just some damn aspirin…”

His voice trailed off.

Makala was waving John off, signaling him to be quiet.

“Dr. Vance. Makala here. I’ve been treating this girl since all this started. She’s a tough kid, a survivor. We can save her life.”

“For how long?” Vance replied, and now his voice was getting cold. “Type one diabetics. A hundred years ago they died within weeks after pancreatic shutdown. That’s the world we are back in now, maybe for years to come.”

Again a pause.

“Nurse Turner. You understand triage as well as I do.”

“Triage?” John shouted. “You are talking about my daughter, god damn it. You will not triage her off.”

“Sir, I am sorry for you. I truly am.”

“Damn you, listen to me! I can mobilize a hundred well-trained infantry and by God we will be there in an hour and by God you will give me that insulin. And if need be I’ll blow up the water main to your damn town.”

A long silence.

“Are you listening to yourself?” Vance said. “Would you really do that?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t think so, John. I’ve heard a lot about you, John; you are not the type to get innocent people killed if you try that stunt. And if you do, the Asheville militia will meet you at Exit 53, and this hospital is cordoned with troops as well. If you blow the main thousands of innocent people will suffer.

“I’m sorry for you, sir. God save us, I’m sorry for all of us, sorry for those who could have prevented this and now must carry that on their souls….”

His voice trailed off, breaking into a muffled sob.

“Good-bye.”

The line clicked off.

“No!”

John swung the phone around, tearing the wire connection out. Filled with impotent rage, he held the phone, and then flung it against the wall. “John, please.”

Makala was in the room, tears streaming down her face.

“Damn all of this. Damn this country. Damn all of this,” and he collapsed into his chair, sobbing.

“Come on, John; let’s go home. She needs us there.”

He finally stood up. In the hallway Judy was standing by the switchboard. She had heard every word and was silently weeping. Tom, gaunt, face pale, was silent, standing in the hallway beside Judy, looking at him.

“John, I’m willing to go up there and try and get it for you,” Tom said softly.

Makala shook her head.

“No, Tom, we’re going home. Can you see to things the next few days?”

“Sure.”

“Judy, hold any calls to the house.”

Makala drove John home. As they passed through the guard post, manned as always by two students, John said nothing, acknowledging nothing, the students watching him, eyes wide, as he and Makala drove through, for they could see he was crying.

Jen was outside the house as they pulled up, Makala helping John to get out. She didn’t need to be told.

“How is she?” Makala asked.

“Drifting in and out. Breath is fruity smelling like you said it would be. She’s no longer urinating; I can’t get water into her.”

“John.”

It was Makala, hands grasping him tight.

“You have to do this now. I want you to go in there as if everything is fine. She is not to know you are afraid. If she asks about medicine, tell her it’s coming shortly. She cannot know you are afraid.”

He nodded.

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

He walked up the front steps and opened the door, then paused.

“Hail Mary full of grace he started to whisper, the prayer going silent as he stepped into the house.

The alcove that faced towards the creek had been converted into the sickroom, a bed set up, raised up higher with books underneath so Jennifer could see out the window, watch the creek and the bird feeder. Elizabeth had finally stirred out of her shock as this crisis came and had spent several hours cracking pinecones, gathering handfuls of the precious seeds to fill the feeder, and keeping by Jennifer’s bedside, reading to her.

Ginger, now nothing but skin and bones, barely able to walk, had crawled up onto the foot of the bed.

Jennifer turned and looked towards him. “Daddy?”

“Here, my pumpkin.”

He came over and sat by the bed. She was clutching Rabs tight, and arrayed on the far side of the bed were the three Beanie Babies she had snatched as they evacuated the now-lost home… one of them Patriot Bear, the gift for her twelfth birthday.

“Will I get well?”

“Sure, sweetheart, you’ll be up and running in no time. Makala and I ordered some medicine and it will be here soon.”

He was afraid to look up at Makala, who he knew was standing in the doorway. If they made eye contact he feared he’d break. Jennifer turned away, features pale. “You’re lying, Daddy. You never could lie to me.”

“No, honey. It’s the truth. You’ll soon feel well.” She said nothing, just looking at him. “Sweetie, would you like me to read to you?” Head turned away, she nodded.

He stood up, scanning the bookshelf, and saw two books and his heart filled. Both had obviously belonged to Mary, one from early childhood. He opened them. Inside one was inscribed. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart… 1976.” The second had in a childish scrawl, in pink crayon, “My book, Mary.”

He set the second book to one side, returned to Jennifer’s bed, opened the first, and started to read. “‘When Mr. Bilbo Baggins, of Bag End—’” And then he stopped.

No, not this one. She had seen the movies when they had first come out and was young enough then that it had frightened her.

He put The Lord of the Rings aside and picked up the second book. It had been Mary’s favorite as a child and it was why Rabs, now nestled in Jennifer’s arms was named Rabs. On the day Jennifer was born he had placed Rabs in her crib and Mary had cried at the sight of the snowy white rabbit from a story she had loved in her own childhood days. Rabs, now so dingy gray from years of being held, kissed, and loved, was nestled in Jennifer’s arms.

“The Adventures of Rabs the Rabbit…” he began, swallowing hard as he turned the first page, remembering so many nights when Mary would read Jennifer to sleep with this wonderful old classic that mother and daughter had so loved and cherished together.

“One day, when Jennifer, and her best friend Rabs had nothing else to do…”

The real name in the book was Kathy but Mary had always used Jennifer’s name, the same way when she was a child, her mother had used hers. He looked up at Jen, who stood silent by the foot of the bed, who unable to speak, could merely nod her head. He felt such love and pity for her at this moment for all that she had lost as well.

And he began to read.

The house was silent throughout the day, except for John softly reading, pausing when Jennifer was obviously asleep.

The shadows lengthened, the windows still open, the cool air drifting in, but he did not close them, the soft rushing of the brook outside the window soothing with its gentle murmur.

Jennifer stirred, Makala trying to get her to drink. She wouldn’t, so Makala just sat by the other side of the bed, moistening Jennifer’s lips with a damp towel.

“Daddy?”

She looked up at him, eyes open. “Sweetie?”

“Remember your promise?”

“Which one was that angel?”

“Let me stay close to you… and keep Rabs warm and with you; he loves you too…”

“Of course, of course,” and control did finally break. Crying, John leaned over and hugged her, kissing her forehead. She tried to put her arms around him but couldn’t, and as he took her hands he could feel how cold they were.

He tucked Rabs back under her arms, floppy head of the much loved stuffed rabbit resting on her chest.

Makala sat on the other side of the bed, gently brushing Jennifer’s brow. Elizabeth had led Jen away, the two in the next room, sobbing. Jennifer was no longer sweat soaked and he knew what that meant. Makala slowly let her hand drift to Jennifer’s throat, felt the pulse, and looked over at John.

He picked the book back up, it was nearly finished, and he continued to read, turning the page with one hand, holding Jennifer’s hand with the other.

He could feel her hand getting colder and he read now, almost in a fast monotone, turning the pages, and then reached the last one.

“And so Rabs, nestled in Jennifer’s arms watched as she went to sleep. ‘Some day you will be all grown up,’ Rabs whispered to her, ‘but I will love you forever. And far, far away, we will play again some day. Sleep tight Jennifer, and I will see you in the morning.’”

“John,” Makala whispered.

He couldn’t speak.

“John, she’s gone.”

He knew. He had felt her slip away before he had turned the last page.

She was buried in the garden, her grave near the bay window, very close by to him as promised. At nighttime Rabs rested on the windowsill inside the house, keeping vigilant watch. He had spent a fair part of the day outside, just sitting by her grave, holding Rabs, talking to Jennifer as if she were sitting before him, again his little girl of five, the fur on Rabs still not completely worn off as it now was, Ginger, barely able to move, lying by his side.

It was towards evening and Makala came to sit by him.

“I’m worried about Elizabeth,” she said. “She needs to eat.”

“There’s nothing to eat,” John replied, “other than the rations at the college.”

“John, she’s in her third month. It’s crucial now, perhaps the most crucial month of all. The rations are mostly carbs. She needs protein, meat, as much as we can force into her.”

Makala fell silent, leaning against his shoulder, and he knew what she was saying.

It was not a hard decision at all now. Not hard at all. He went into the house and came out a minute later, carrying the .22 pistol. He handed Rabs to her.

Ginger was lying by Jennifer’s grave as if keeping watch. He knelt down and picked Ginger up. She was so light. “Come along,” he whispered. “You can still save a life, my dear friend. And besides… Jennifer wants to play with you again.”